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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23288143">And He’s Still Building Habitat for Humanity Houses to This Day</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance'>FrenchTwistResistance</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>One-Term Presidents [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, I just want caos to be a sitcom where hot middle-aged ladies kiss, Sex Pollen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:48:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,940</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23288143</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hilda finds herself under a very uncomfortable  but very illuminating curse.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hilda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Hilda Spellman/Zelda Spellman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>One-Term Presidents [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674799</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>And He’s Still Building Habitat for Humanity Houses to This Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>If a person writes one classic nonsense magical trope, that person might as well go ahead and write another classic nonsense magical trope. </p><p>So here’s sex pollen.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zelda’s lying in bed trying not to think about what Mary had proposed that warm, sunny afternoon a week ago. She’s intermittently been able to put it out of her mind. But tonight in the dark quiet with Hilda’s steady sleep breathing in the bed a yard away, the scent of a recently extinguished beeswax candle even closer. </p><p>It’s overwhelming suddenly.</p><p>They’d all been exhausted from their efforts undoing the corporeal reversal curse, and as they’d all been recovering in the parlor she’d made the mistake of looking over to where Hilda had collapsed on the settee. Hilda’s blouse had come unbuttoned an extra button and had been generously askew in Hilda’s oblivious repose. Zelda hadn’t been able to stop herself from staring. It had been a magnetic sight on its own, but as Zelda had drunk it in, she’d been remembering what it had felt like to be inside that body, pulling and cajoling fabric around that body, and then she had found herself contemplating what it might be like to touch that body from the outside and imagining what that outside touch would feel like given what she now knew about how that body responded to stimuli.</p><p>Zelda had been staring shamelessly at flushed, exposed skin, and Mary—from her spot perched on an ottoman near the fireplace with a good view of Hilda’s legs because of her angle and the way Hilda’s skirt had bunched haphazardly on her lethargic descent onto the settee—had caught her. </p><p>Zelda had wondered at the time how they’d ever made eye contact and exchanged knowing glances with how focused both of them had been. One intuitively recognizes one's own proclivities in others, Zelda supposes now in hindsight.</p><p>But however it had originally come about, it’s stuck in her head like a catchy radio jingle. She wants desperately to buy what that jingle’s selling. That’s the point of a jingle, after all—to make one remember it and look favorably upon its product.</p><p>She’s lying there, staring at the ceiling, trying to replace the insistent intrusive thoughts with other neutral ones—dark scripture verses, distant memories, hazy plans for the future, outfits she’d like to buy. </p><p>But it’s fruitless. </p><p>Everything comes back around. The tune is still cycling through her brain, ready to wiggle itself into any open space. </p><p>Enticing flashes of what could be.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Hilda’s tending to her legumes: she’s hilling her incipient peanuts by piling earth and hay around the buds. </p><p>It’s mindless work, and so her mind wanders. Her mind wanders to that stifling afternoon a week ago:</p><p>They’d worked together, felt each other’s magic, and were then luxuriating in the magnified sun of glass planes in the parlor, trying to regain their senses corporately and individually.</p><p>Hilda had been reclined on the settee, overheated, and blank because of that, and she had felt two sets of eyes upon her, boring into her, not exactly expectant but something close. She had ignored the feeling at first until she had calmed down and cooled down, had let herself relax before having to process whatever was happening around her, which she had been sure was some volatile mix of personalities and unspoken ideas—unvoiced desires, shared and shameful.</p><p>By the time she’d been ready to address either of them, they’d somehow come to an understanding without her, and Mary had started talking with her low, sleek voice.</p><p>Hilda had quashed it immediately.</p><p>As Hilda had seen it, it hadn’t been so much a party pooper move than it had been more of a nipping it in the bud:</p><p>It couldn’t be sustainable. </p><p>It could be hot, but it couldn’t be fulfilling. It could be decadent, but it couldn’t be safe. Too many desires exposed, too many emotions laid bare. One time would turn into two, and then into jealousy and non-discussions, then into fights, ultimately into a trip to the Cain pit or worse—a silent chasm, a separation, Hilda holed up in their beach house on Cape Cod lying low for a decade  or so before Zelda would be ready to negotiate a reconciliation. </p><p>The worst version of If You Give a Moose a Muffin.</p><p>Hilda continues carefully hoeing at her rows of peanuts with a clear conscience. She’s circumvented both Mary and Zelda—for now, anyway. She’ll have to walk a tightrope for a little while until they all forget about it, but she didn’t spend six years touring with Barnum and Bailey as a trapeze artist to not have good balance.</p><p>She’s just finishing up her specific task for the morning when she thinks: maybe she ought to cool it with Mary for the time being. Just a good faith show of solidarity. Due diligence. A few weeks of being nothing more than platonic, accommodating sister to Zelda and removed but concerned parent to Mary—like the old times—to prove she’s still the same old boring person she’s always been.</p><p>xxx</p><p>But Mary’s too enticing a figure—too sexy and too opportunistic and too intuitive by half.</p><p>Zelda’s out at an Academy fundraiser, and here’s Mary sidling up next to Hilda on the covered, wraparound porch on the side of the house overlooking the cemetery. </p><p>Hilda’s curled up on the porch swing flipping through a crochet magazine and sipping a glass of merlot when Mary places a deceptively strong hand on the seat slats and stills it just enough to board it.</p><p>Mary’s sitting cross legged and she’s got an arm slung over behind Hilda’s shoulders. She says,</p><p>“You’ve been avoiding me.” Hilda pushes her reading glasses up past her hairline, looks over, says,</p><p>“I have not either.” Mary smiles condescendingly, stretches her legs out to stop the swinging, says,</p><p>“I understand that you don’t want to… overextend yourself. But if I’m right—and I’m almost always right—you’re not currently extending yourself at all. Not to be childish and petty, but I do believe I have dibs. Emotionally perhaps not. But physically certainly. And I don’t exactly get why you’ve cut me off. I suggested a threesome on your behalf, after all. Truth be told, I’d much rather have you to myself.”</p><p>Hilda blinks at her, and Mary picks up her feet. The porch swing resumes its course, up and down, up and down. Hilda’s always had steady sea legs, so she knows it’s not the motion that’s making her queasy.</p><p>“I just need some time,” Hilda says. “To sort things.”</p><p>“You know how well I can sort you,” Mary says.</p><p>Hilda considers, hums, says,</p><p>“Maybe so. But not here. Seems like a betrayal somehow.”</p><p>Mary runs a hand through her hair and rolls her eyes, says,</p><p>“Engine’s still warm on the Lincoln.”</p><p>xxx</p><p>Zelda scrawls her bidding number and dollar amount on the handmade ceramic chips-and-salsa implement’s sheet. It’s not something she wants, needs, or even likes, but she knows Hilda would appreciate it. It had been made by someone in witch juvenile detention trying to better themself. It’s soundly constructed and if it were to come home with her it wouldn’t be the worst eyesore in the china hutch.</p><p>Zelda returns to wandering around, letting herself see and be seen. She’s draped in clinging black silk.</p><p>She’s dressed to be seen. She’s dressed to be looked at. She’s dressed to be ogled.</p><p>Hilda has been so noncommittal lately, so neutral. So now at this event in the absence of Hilda, Zelda’s needed to be a woman it’d be difficult to be noncommittal about. Zelda needs the power of that just now.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Hilda has her hand out the open window of the Towncar, catching and releasing the wind as Mary drives lazily on the unpaved roads between Greendale and Riverdale.</p><p>The wind changes; there’s rain in it, just the threat of rain, and suddenly they’re headed north instead, now on a four-lane blacktop—an ancient interstate. </p><p>Mary pulls off onto a scenic overlook marked by a small brown sign but neglected and forgotten other than that.</p><p>“An overlooked overlook,” Hilda says.</p><p>Mary gives her what seems to Hilda a compulsory chuckle and then,</p><p>“Ideal for stargazing.”</p><p>They’re lying on a blanket Mary’s pulled out of her trunk and lain out on the gravel on the passenger side of the car. They’re lying hip to hip and holding hands. </p><p>Mary’s staring up at the clear spangled sky, but Hilda’s attention is down the side of the slope she’s very close to. One small push and she’d tumble all the way down the valley, land in lush green weeds at the opening to a dense wood.</p><p>“I wonder how many truffles are down there,” Hilda says rather absently. Hilda feels Mary’s eyes rake over her and then down to where she’s looking.</p><p>“Probably zero,” Mary says, authoritatively yet mysteriously.</p><p>“But it looks so…” Hilda doesn’t say fertile or abundant or any of the other similar adjectives she’s thinking about it.</p><p>“Yes, that’s what a cursed forest wants you to think. Don’t look at it too long,” Mary says.</p><p>“Cursed forest? I’ve been here my whole life and never known anything about such a thing,” Hilda says, still looking.</p><p>“It moves around,” Mary says.</p><p>“But what—” Hilda starts.</p><p>There’s an air brake, skidding, a lot of incomprehensible noise. </p><p>They both seem to take in the bright headlights at the same time as they both scream and Mary puts one arm protectively over her forehead and reaches to do the same to Hilda, but there’s already metal meeting metal at the Lincoln’s back left bumper. Screeching and sliding. And Hilda is rolling down the hill.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Hilda wakes up in her own bed to the early morning sun streaming through the seams of her curtains.</p><p>Her body is sore as she stretches and yawns.</p><p>But it’s not a bad sore. It’s the good, rejuvenating sore one earns with vigorous exercise.</p><p>But she doesn’t remember exercising.</p><p>She doesn’t remember much of anything since tending her peanuts, in fact. That could’ve been an hour ago or a week ago.</p><p>Regardless, she’s famished. She wraps a robe around her curiously nude body and descends the stairs.</p><p>The coffee maker is percolating. The waffle maker is sizzling with batter.</p><p>Zelda is smoking a cigarette behind a Laotian newspaper.</p><p>Hilda surveys the scene perfunctorily.</p><p>It’s as if she’s outside her own body. Seeing and knowing what’s going on and what room she’s in objectively because it’s what it should be. But she herself is in a kind of daze.</p><p>Hilda suddenly and uncharacteristically needs bacon and begins thawing a freezer gallon bag of about a half package of strips.</p><p>And even as she’s doing so, her body is tingling, electric. She feels something, something different. Her heart beats quick and hard. Her fingers tremble and ache. She places her hands under the gallon bag and feels the hot water cooling as it meets the plastic on top of her skin.</p><p>She doesn’t know exactly why she’s doing this, but one thing she does know is that she is uncomfortably aroused.</p><p>She dries her hands on a dish towel and stumbles back a few paces, hoists herself up onto the counter. She doesn’t typically sit on counters, but it seems right to her right now, the solid formica beneath her, fingernails digging into the softer underside of the edge. Off to her left there’s a white gift box decorated with a large yellow organza bow. She can’t look at it and wonder about it in her current state. It’s too taxing. She rests her head against the spice cabinet and takes a breath, closes her eyes, feels the unusual and unwarranted pulsing at her center.</p><p>There are no thoughts in her brain. All she has are vague impressions and distinct feelings: the feeling of her terry cloth robe soft but grainy and grating against her naked flesh, the feeling of her body’s aches—the ache of overworked muscles and the ache of wanting, desiring, throbbing.</p><p>She’s got to have that bacon. She’s got to have. Something. Something salty and fatty and savory. Something she can sink her teeth into, chew on. Something that gives, maybe a little reluctantly, in her mouth. </p><p>She opens her eyes in preparation to hop down and finds that Zelda’s eyes are peering over her newspaper, are on her, are examining her. She doesn’t know whether she should assign lust to them. It wouldn’t be too much of a logical leap, given what has recently been so explicitly revealed with Mary, but she recognizes her judgment is compromised currently because of her strange condition, so she decides to extend the benefit of the doubt on the matter. But she does—perhaps it’s intellectual curiosity but probably not because she’s having trouble parsing her own thoughts let alone anyone else’s—follow the trajectory of Zelda’s gaze like an algebra one student studying a slope intercept graph. The y is Zelda’s eyes, and the x is where Hilda’s robe has slipped to reveal just a hint of dusky pink left areola. </p><p>She looks down at herself. She’s physically a mess, robe slapdash and not concealing much. That tracks. That’s how her mind feels, too. Tacky like wet paint. But also simultaneously. Tacky like Elvis commemorative plates.</p><p>She hops down and follows Zelda’s eyes following her.</p><p>It shouldn’t excite her so much, but it does. She has the sinking feeling that any scrutiny would excite her. She’s so worked up. From nothing. From everything. She’s still outside of herself, watching from above, but also so present, feeling everything from the miniscule bumps on the pan’s handle to the heat of the stovetop to the slickness between her legs.</p><p>She’s placing strips of bacon into a preheated cast-iron pan.</p><p>Zelda’s eyes are once again hidden behind her newspaper, but her voice says,</p><p>“You’ve been avoiding me.”</p><p>“Sorry you’ve perceived it that way,” Hilda says. It’s not a response she’s thought about, just an automatic reflex. </p><p>Unbidden there are images of Zelda on top of her, flushed and grasping and elated, in the throes of orgasm. Images she’s never actually seen but her brain has decided to produce. She flips the bacon, continues, </p><p>“I couldn’t avoid you if I tried. Even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, for the record.”</p><p>Grease pops, and Hilda jumps.</p><p>But she almost wants the pain of it.</p><p>“Could’ve fooled me,” Zelda says.</p><p>Hilda adjusts the burner’s heat, hears herself say,</p><p>“And just what kind of attention have you been wanting from me that you haven’t been getting?” She wouldn’t be so embarrassed at having said it if she had said it some other way than the suggestive way she had. And if she hadn’t seen the newspaper waver, glimpsed just a hint of Zelda’s raised eyebrows. She focuses on the bacon, watches it bubble and begin to change colors. </p><p>Zelda says, a husky timbre to her voice,</p><p>“Do you really want me to answer that?”</p><p>“I think I do,” Hilda says. It’s the part of her that wants to eat this bacon that says it, the part of her that needs something the other part of her doesn’t understand or perhaps has pretended not to understand.</p><p>Zelda hastily folds the newspaper, flops it across the table from her, looks at Hilda. And once again there’s a clear line that could be easily graphed from Zelda’s eyes to Hilda’s poorly covered breasts. Hilda studies that line for a moment. She’s no longer assigning lust; it’s there without any overlay, bare and vibrating.</p><p>Hilda plates the bacon and shuts off the burner.</p><p>“Any attention is good attention,” Zelda says.</p><p>Hilda bites into a slice of bacon, chews, licks her greasy fingers. She watches Zelda watch her. She says,</p><p>“That can’t be your real answer.”</p><p>xxx</p><p>Dark. </p><p>Just the sliver of a quarter moon through the dense canopy.</p><p>But then also iridescence. Not unlike the bioluminescence of mysterious deep-sea creatures, unknown and undocumented for a very good reason.</p><p>Hilda had rolled and rolled down and down and had landed in a patch of soft moss at the base of a gigantic tree.</p><p>She had looked up, searching, searching for Mary, searching for the silver Lincoln. </p><p>There had been nothing to be seen but black. She hadn’t wanted to have not seen, but it had been right somehow that she was here and now and beholden to nothing, supine under a nothing black sky enclosed in black branches, laid out over potential truffles.</p><p>Hilda sat up. She brushed debris out of her hair. She was ready. Ready for what? She didn’t know. But she was sitting there in pine needles, ready for anything.</p><p>A figure ambled out of the thick brush into the clearing where Hilda was.</p><p>He stood there with his hands in the pockets of his navy pin-striped trousers. His wide red paisley tie was flapping in the breeze that was still threatening rain.</p><p>“I voted for you. In 1976,” Hilda said.</p><p>The figure laughed.</p><p>“This is the Cursed Forest. I’m an apparition of a person who’s appealing or comforting to you,” he said. “Says more about you than this Cursed Forest, really. But that’s neither here nor there.”</p><p>“But what is here or there?” Hilda said.</p><p>“The curse, of course. The curse of the Cursed Forest. Well. A curse of the Cursed Forest.” Jimmy Carter’s apparition said. “Don’t worry. The Cursed Forest assigns you one of its curses that it thinks will be particularly annoying to you, just for kicks. But honestly, it’s not the worst curse that one could endure. Doesn’t last more than a week or so.” </p><p>“No way to get out of it, then?” Hilda said.</p><p>“Oh no. It’s a lie back and think of England sort of deal. Or a take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Or a tie a knot and hold on. Whatever your preferred grin and bear it cliche might be,” Not Jimmy Carter said.</p><p>“But what is the curse, exactly? Just so I can prepare myself on how to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel…?”</p><p>“By the time you remember this interaction, which is occurring in a sort of magical suspended dream state as the Cursed Forest is cleaning up the mess it created to get you here, you’ll have already discovered what’s happening to you.”</p><p>Hilda harrumphed,</p><p>“I’m not saying I should’ve voted for Gerald Ford in 1976, but I’m also not saying I regret not voting for you in 1980.”</p><p>“Even if I were the real Jimmy Carter that wouldn’t hurt my feelings. I’m a well-paid apparition with excellent benefits, and he’s got a Nobel Peace Prize,” Not Jimmy Carter chuckled and began ambling back toward the heart of the wood.</p><p>Dark.</p><p>xxx</p><p>“Any attention is good attention,” Zelda says. It’s the kind of thing a person says about a wayward child doing something bad on purpose to elicit a reaction, any reaction. Zelda knows it’s a stupid thing to say, but she’s decided it’s ambiguous enough for the situation. She’s having trouble figuring out whether Hilda is dressed—and that’s a generous word for it—the way she is purposefully. She’s having trouble figuring out whether Hilda is flirting with her. She’s usually very good at this sort of communication, with other people anyway. But with Hilda, especially because of their recent history, it all seems like a cruel joke.</p><p>Here she is in the kitchen, having mixed up organic buckwheat waffle batter for Hilda, having bought that asinine chips and salsa tray for her last night at the auction. She’s trying to be considerate and decent. And yet here’s Hilda ignoring the waffles and the box tied with yellow polka dot ribbon in favor of letting her robe slip off seductively and fry up bacon, which she doesn’t eat and which Zelda hasn’t requested.</p><p>Hilda bites into a slice of bacon, chews, licks her greasy fingers. Zelda watches her, watches Hilda watching her watch her. Hilda says,</p><p>“That can’t be your real answer.”</p><p>It’s not her real answer. She doesn’t even know what her real answer is. Her gaze again accidentally dips. Hilda’s robe is loosely tied, and Zelda can see so much skin. </p><p>She’s seen Hilda naked before. In the bath or changing clothes or slipping into pajamas. Brief glimpses where she’s been expected to pull up a zipper or hand over a special soap or help rub in a cream. </p><p>But this is so different and so enticing. Because Hilda is actively flirting with her. Isn’t she?</p><p>“Well. Certain kinds of attention are better than others,” Zelda says.</p><p>Hilda rounds the kitchen island. She’s holding a strip of bacon in one hand. She props herself up on the breakfast nook table inches away from Zelda, robe undulating and then settling so that a full half of her right breast is visible. They look at each other. Zelda is overwhelmed, compromised, trying to control her breathing. </p><p>Hilda devours the strip of bacon in her hand, says,</p><p>“You still haven’t told me what you expect from me.”</p><p>Zelda still doesn’t know how to tell her what she wants. She’s not sure she even knows precisely. No, she does know; she just can’t say it. She goes on the offense instead:</p><p>“I’m not going to beg you to look at me or talk to me or go places with me. You either will or you won’t.”</p><p>She’s about to stand, exit the kitchen, run away.</p><p>But she’s suddenly pinned to her chair as Hilda lurches into her lap.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Dark.</p><p>After Jimmy Carter left, Hilda started up the hill. She was halfway up before she realized she was not halfway up but somehow farther into the woods, thighs burning as if she’d been on a stair master. The woods glowed an eerie pink and violet and turquoise around her, buzzing with insect screeches and chirps that sounded like they were on the wrong setting on a record player. </p><p>A shadowy figure just beyond was waving at her.</p><p>“Jimmy Carter, you horse-faced hick! Get me out of here!” Hilda said, and her voice was on that same wrong setting—a 45 at 33 and a third, wonky and jarring. And she’d never say anything that mean if she were in her right mind.</p><p>The figure was saying something, but a 33 and a third at 45, and she couldn’t discern what was being said. Walking toward the figure was not working, and a strange thought occurred to her: maybe she could swim there. She stripped out of her clothes, closed her eyes, and jumped.</p><p>She didn’t feel water but certainly a buoyancy and resistance, waves and tide. Breast stroke wasn’t getting her anywhere. She tried butterfly next.</p><p>She felt the cool breeze of the clearing just barely on her fingertips, could see distorted shapes beyond the veil of the wood. And then a hot hand on her wrist, pulling her out. And she was flopping down on top of Mary Wardwell—an accidental tackle—in the damp grass of the valley.</p><p>They lay there a moment together, and then Mary rolled Hilda off her gently, propped herself up on her elbow, said,</p><p>“You looked at it too long.”</p><p>“What?” Hilda said.</p><p>“The Cursed Forest. You looked at it too long. And it got you. Satan knows what curse it decided to give you. But you need a good night’s sleep if you’re gonna get in front of it.”</p><p>“What are my curse options?”</p><p>Mary laughed,</p><p>“It didn’t slip the new menu in my storm door this year.”</p><p>Hilda’s head was beginning to pound.</p><p>“But wait. Are you ok? You got run over by an eighteen wheeler.”</p><p>“I’m fine, and so’s the Lincoln. Cursed Forest bullshit mirage. Let’s get you home and showered. The Cursed Forest glitter looks good on you, but I’m sure your dear sister would have a lot of questions about it.”</p><p>Dark.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Hilda’s sitting on the edge of the breakfast nook table, looking down at Zelda’s face, which has changed slightly from avid to the way she looks when she’s trying to look intimidating but isn’t quite achieving it. She’s always had a certain fondness for the expression, but it’s unexpectedly contributing to her arousal this morning. She squeezes her thighs together. </p><p>“I’m not going to beg you to look at me or talk to me or go places with me. You either will or you won’t,” Zelda says. Hilda feels a pang in her heart at that but can’t exactly piece together what she’s talking about, is still feeling outside of herself, fuddled. Then.</p><p>A sharp pain in her left temple. Debilitating and overpowering. She falls forward into Zelda’s lap.</p><p>“Moloch’s mother!” Hilda says as Zelda’s saying,</p><p>“What do you think you’re doing?!”</p><p>Hilda slumps forward even more, grabs Zelda’s blouse at the lapel to steady herself. Zelda’s hands are rubbing up and down Hilda’s arms, her voice now traced with alarm:</p><p>“Hilda! What on earth is going on? Are you ill?”</p><p>Hilda presses her face into Zelda’s collarbone, attempting to stanch the pain.</p><p>And as suddenly as it had come on, it’s gone, and Hilda’s in Zelda’s embrace, smelling her perfume. But at least she has clarity now. She needs a second to collect the thoughts she’s just remembered, and she can’t do that nuzzled against Zelda’s breasts. She jumps up, starts pacing.</p><p>Zelda has also jumped up and grabs her by the elbow.</p><p>“Has something happened?” Zelda says.</p><p>“Afraid so, Zelds. I looked at it too long.” Just now she’s looking at where Zelda’s blouse is cockeyed from where she’d manhandled it, at the lacy black bra that’s been revealed.</p><p>“Looked at what too long? Hell’s legion! Something odd is going on, and you’re speaking in riddles!”</p><p>“Did you know there’s a Cursed Forest between here and Riverdale?”</p><p>“Of course. I mean sometimes it’s on the other side of Scarsdale Unincorporated and sometimes it’s—” Zelda pauses and then, “Oh Hildie. You didn’t.”</p><p>“Well I certainly didn’t mean to!” </p><p>Zelda straightens her blouse, straightens her spine, lights a cigarette, says,</p><p>“Sit down and tell me what happened. And for Satan’s sake, tie your robe before I lose my mind.”</p><p>xxx</p><p>“Did you take me to that Cursed Forest on purpose? So you could get me unbelievably and uncontrollably hot and bothered for a whole week? That’s low, Wardwell. Unconscionable, even!”</p><p>Hilda’s burst into Mary’s cottage, guns ablaze. But Mary’s not in the living room or office or kitchen. Hilda’s standing in the hallway, wondering if she’d made a miscalculation thinking Mary’d parked in the garage.</p><p>But just as she’s about to cut her losses and leave, Mary sashays into the hall from the bathroom in just a towel, hair wet, skin glistening.</p><p>“I’m sorry, didn’t quite catch all of your rant. What are you accusing me of, darling?”</p><p>Hilda forgets her train of thought looking at Mary’s svelte legs, the way her hands are taut and veiny holding up the towel. She flops into an armchair and stares hard at the unexciting mantelpiece to get herself together.</p><p>“Oh you heard me. You’re just being a tease.”</p><p>“Caught me,” Mary says, and Hilda feels her heat behind her, and then Mary’s hands are on her shoulders and her mouth is at her ear.</p><p>“Honestly. I didn’t know it would be there. Thought it’d be out by Scarsdale Unincorporated for another month or so. But I guess you’ve figured out which curse it gave you.”</p><p>Mary’s massaging her trapezius and kissing her neck and then continuing,</p><p>“And I guess it’s a good thing you’ve got me to help you out with it.”</p><p>Hilda almost gives in but jerks out of her grasp, says,</p><p>“How very convenient!” Mary rounds the chair, pouting and completely nude, casually leaning against the unlit hearth. The throbbing between Hilda’s legs is nearing a fever pitch at the tableau. Mary says,</p><p>“Even if I had known it was there, I couldn’t have anticipated this particular curse. Would you like me to swear on something?”</p><p>Hilda’s still suspicious. She stands, in preparation to say so and exit, but there’s that stabbing in her left temple again, and she’s stumbling into Mary’s body. Mary catches her and guides her back into the armchair, carefully places Hilda’s hands on her naked hips and steadies them there, cradles Hilda’s head against her lower abdomen, strokes her hair.</p><p>The invisible knife removes itself. </p><p>“That’s how it works. It hurts you if you deny yourself.” Mary hooks her index finger under Hilda’s chin, lifts it so they can look at each other, says, “You can’t think I’d want you to be under a curse that causes you harm, can you?”</p><p>Hilda shakes her head.</p><p>“Now quit being silly and let me take you to bed.”</p><p>Hilda nods.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Zelda’s in the office, immersing herself in accounts receivable. Accounts payable is finished for the week, at least. Hilda had seen to that before she’d gotten herself sex cursed. Zelda doesn’t want to think about that. She clenches her jaw and turns up the radio. Task at hand, one day at a time. She can endure anything if it’s broken up into small enough increments.</p><p>Of course, the burden isn’t hers. Not really. Hilda’s the one suffering. But she can’t help it. She’s always suffered when Hilda’s suffered. It’s why killing her is so satisfying: not only does it allow her to touch Hilda in an intimate way—what’s more intimate than that sheer, thin boundary between life and death, after all?—but also it feeds that masochistic streak in her that thinks, knows she’s reprehensible and deserves pain and punishment.</p><p>A rather maudlin train of thought for the absurdity of the situation at hand—a situation that could reasonably be resolved with a healthy regimen of well-placed double-a batteries interspersed with cold showers. </p><p>Zelda rolls her eyes at herself and refocuses on the am easy listening radio—some cheesy instrumental version of a ‘70s pop song with a lot of fake vibraphone—and the accounts receivable—Mrs. Rasmussen’s husband’s embalming, Mr. Porthos’s father’s cremation, Ms. Tilden’s partner’s natural burial, etc., etc.</p><p>She’s working steadily, drafting emails and inputting figures into spreadsheets.</p><p>Suddenly she perceives something else:</p><p>The kitchen door bangs open and shut. There’s clanging and clambering, glasses jangling.</p><p>Surely that’s Sabrina home early from her weekend with Roz and Theo. </p><p>Hilda’s a lot of things, but sloppy, distracting, and reckless with glassware are not typically among them. </p><p>So the racket has got to be someone else.</p><p>Zelda’s suddenly concerned: what if Sabrina’s also accidentally tumbled into the Cursed Forest?  Can the household sustain that many curses? </p><p>She throws down her pen, tosses off her reading glasses, rushes to the kitchen, expecting the worst. </p><p>Zelda knows the Cursed Forest is capable of so many different weird curses. She’s half-suspecting Sabrina will have been turned into a pig, Circe style, and is now back home by some suppressed instinct or muscle memory, rooting around breaking everything in sight in a hedonistic search for what she had known as her former self.</p><p>But of course that’s not it.</p><p>Of course.</p><p>Of course it’s Hilda instead, wobbling home, sore and spent. </p><p>Of course it’s Hilda, who is pouring herself a double bourbon, neat, and reclining against the liquor cabinet with her eyes closed, hair tousled, clothes even more mismatched than usual. An incongruous amalgamation of garments pulled blindly from a selection comprised of whatever had been left over and since laundered from the last time she’d stayed at that woman’s house.</p><p>As Zelda steps farther into the kitchen, she registers that Hilda smells like fresh sex and that she looks particularly rode hard and put away wet.</p><p>She shouldn’t make a thing of it. </p><p>It’s none of her business. </p><p>Sure, Hilda’s under a curse. And sure, she feels compelled to ameliorate in whatever way she can. But perhaps the best way in this instance is no way—hands off, let nature take its course.</p><p>She’s not that type, though, even against her better judgment. But to her chagrin, even with her better judgment, she’s the jealous type.</p><p>“You look much better,” Zelda says, rather acidly. Although she hadn’t meant it that way. Or she hadn’t consciously meant it that way. And besides, it’s a lie. Hilda doesn’t really look better so much as too tired to be anxious. “Do you feel better?” She’s trying very poorly to lead a conversation that she knows damn good and well will hurt her any way it goes.</p><p>Hilda’s eyes open as her head is still resting against the liquor cabinet; she’s slowly blinking at first, and then her eyes are wide and lucid. Hilda says,</p><p>“I don’t think it’s smart to have a lot of close contact with you just now. I’m going to go get my toothbrush and some clothes and then sleep in the spare room.”</p><p>Hilda pushes herself off the liquor cabinet, stands in front of Zelda with a questioning look on her face.</p><p>Zelda nods in acquiescence. It’s a reluctant nod, but it’s a nod regardless, and Hilda disappears up the stairs.</p><p>Zelda finishes Hilda’s abandoned whiskey. And for good measure finishes a few of her own.</p><p>xxx</p><p>They’ve successfully avoided each other for the better part of four days.</p><p>Hilda had gotten up extra early that first morning to fix breakfast and leave a few little notes in a few different locations for Zelda to reassure her that there’s no ill will and that she cares about her and that she appreciates the chips and salsa serving tray and that she’ll definitely take her to the shooting range when the curse is over. She had almost promised dancing but then thought better of it. Too much touching. She doesn’t know if there will be residual side effects, and even if there aren’t. Well. She doesn’t want to think about what all’s been dredged up from her deepest secret places in the past few weeks.</p><p>She’s spent most of her time in the non-cursed woods scavenging healing herbs and things to dry and preserve and store up in the cellar. She doesn’t need to be doing this; she’s got plenty already, and she knows there’s no cure for her current condition but time. But it’s something to keep her occupied and out of human contact. She figures this is best. Doesn’t want to overtax Mary and doesn’t want to do anything hasty she might regret with anyone else—Zelda included.</p><p>But she hasn’t been on an extended camping trip in a while, and the added exhaustion of being horny all the time mixed with the anxiety of being alone with potential predatory animals and free-floating magic from the witches in the area and the Cursed Forest a few miles away. It’s all kind of getting to her.</p><p>She packs up her rucksack and shovels dirt onto the smoldering embers of her fire and heads home for a shower and a good night’s sleep in a bed.</p><p>Hilda wakes up so sweaty and disoriented. She’s reminded of that night about twenty years ago that suddenly in the middle of the night the temperature had spiked from the mid fifties to over a hundred. Just briefly. Could this be happening now? Or had she forgotten to extinguish her fire and she’d rolled closer in slumber? No she’s not outside. And she’s not lying down.</p><p>She’s sitting on her knees on the edge of Zelda’s bed. Zelda’s breathing steadily, calmly, unconsciously. She’s so beautifully serene this way although her covers have been bunched up to the other side of her and one pillow has been cast to the floor—evidence of turbulence earlier in the night. But apparently she’s struggled through whatever it was and is tranquil now. Hilda watches her chest rise and fall peacefully under her taupe silk nightgown another moment and then—</p><p>Pissing pentagrams! She’d known she should’ve stayed in her pup tent until this was well over.</p><p>She sighs heavily, trying to shake herself out of whatever trance she’s in, and makes to stand.</p><p>Zelda’s hand, which had been draped languidly over her stomach, shoots out and grabs Hilda's forearm. Her eyes don’t open, but her breathing has changed slightly—quicker, shallower. And she says,</p><p>“Don’t leave. Please.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to— I must’ve been— Go back to sleep, Zelds,” Hilda whispers, but Zelda’s grip on her only tightens.</p><p>“As if I’d be able to,” Zelda says.</p><p>“I wish you’d try,” Hilda says. She’s lowered one foot to the hardwood and is shifting her weight. Zelda’s kicked off the last vestiges of her bedding and is sitting up, eyes open and perusing Hilda’s form in the dark with wide black pupils, fingers still firmly clamped onto Hilda’s arm. And it’s all so much tingling and electricity to Hilda.</p><p>Hilda should’ve anticipated something like this and prepared an exit plan. But she hadn’t and didn’t. It’s all taken her by surprise, crept up on her, ambushed her when she was most vulnerable. She’d been vigilant against wolves and bobcats when she’d camped out in the woods, but now that she’s back in society, she should’ve been vigilant against this. It’s just as dangerous.</p><p>Zelda’s grasp loosens, and her hand is sliding up and down Hilda’s arm—fingertips dancing against a bicep and fluttering down incrementally to circle her thumb against the underside of Hilda’s wrist.</p><p>And there’s the familiar miserable strain at Hilda’s left temple. It hurts more than ever. Piercing, exquisite pain, radiating to every part of her. She hunches over, her face dropping onto Zelda’s chest, cheekbone at Zelda’s collarbone, puffs of tortured exhalation at Zelda’s breastbone.</p><p>Hilda is in excruciating pain, but she also rather remotely feels Zelda’s hand in her hair, soothing as much as it’s inciting.</p><p>“Stay with me,” Zelda says as her other hand skims Hilda’s ribs.</p><p>The pain vanishes. It comes and goes as it pleases. And it’s been pleased to go now.</p><p>Hilda breathes a few more breaths at Zelda’s diaphragm. She’s free to do so, after all. She then lifts her head just enough to turn it and look into Zelda’s eyes.</p><p>“You can’t mean what I think you mean,” Hilda says.</p><p>“Try me,” Zelda says.</p><p>xxx</p><p>Hilda’s in Mary’s hot tub, letting the jets minister to her aching back ribs. She’s got her eyes closed and is willing herself to not think, just feel—just feel the warmth of the water and the firm pressure of the stream at her spine and the contentment Mary’s letting her pick up from her aura. It’s good here. And it’s easy here. And the curse is over. At least she suspects it is. She can look at Mary in her bathing suit and desire her yet not touch her while also not feeling as though someone’s prying at her brain with a grapefruit spoon.</p><p>“How’d the rest of the week go? I half expected to be greeted by candles and rose petals and soft jazz and a beautiful naked woman in my bed every evening after work. I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed. And maybe a little jealous,” Mary says, leadingly.</p><p>Hilda opens her eyes a bit warily, looks into Mary’s penetrating and questioning blue gaze.</p><p>“I wasn’t off having indiscriminate intercourse with anyone I could find at the pubs, if that’s what you’re asking.”</p><p>“I’m not asking anything,” Mary says. But Hilda knows she is asking something. Just not that. Hilda knows she wouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion.</p><p>“I distanced myself. Went camping. Restocked and reorganized the cellar. Changed the oil and belts and air filters on all the vehicles.”</p><p>“Very wise of you. Very productive, too,” Mary says, smiling benevolently but also sort of mysteriously.</p><p>Hilda closes her eyes again and sinks farther into the water so she doesn’t have to see Mary’s reaction to the next one. She doesn’t strictly have to confess, but she does anyway:</p><p>“I also slept with Zelda. Just once.”</p><p>“Oh praise Satan.” Mary’s voice is relieved and elated. Hilda’s eyes fly open at that, take in Mary’s open, upbeat, lively expression.</p><p>“You’re not—” Hilda is searching for the right word to use—upset? jealous? horrified? disgusted? Of course, Mary had suggested and encouraged such a thing. But faced with it plainly like this, not theoretically or hypothetically but something real that had occurred outside her supervision, Hilda had suspected Mary would change her tune. She’s a tad confounded at her apparent misjudgment. </p><p>Mary floats closer to her, wraps an arm around her shoulders, kisses her squarely on the mouth—friendly rather than passionate. Then Mary says,</p><p>“So nice to no longer have that unresolved issue hanging over all our respective heads.”</p><p>She kisses her again, this time less friendly and more passionate, her other hand snaking around Hilda’s waist. And she continues her thought:</p><p>“I understand if you want to continue with her. I don’t need any details, and in fact I do not want details at all. Just. If you’re going to break a date with me, please give me 24 hours notice. And I, in turn, won’t come over without having called you first.” She pulls herself closer to Hilda’s body, rests her forehead against Hilda’s forehead.</p><p>“And you really think this is a feasible arrangement?” Hilda says, returning Mary’s embrace—her own hands at Mary’s hips—pulling her even closer.</p><p>Mary kisses her, all passion now, but a slow, measured passion.</p><p>“It’ll be feasible until it isn’t anymore. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Mary says against Hilda’s mouth before she thrusts her tongue in again.</p>
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